‘De-gayed for TV for 26 years’: Gardening Australia star is proud to be out

This article contains a discussion of sexual assault.

Gardening Australia’s current longest-serving presenter, Jerry Coleby-Williams, is a beloved fixture of Australian television. For 26 years, his gentle English lilt has invited us to share his love of horticulture. And for 26 years, he has felt he had to hide his identity on screen as an out and proud gay man.

That all changed this year when Jerry and his husband, Thuan, marched with the ABC float in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade. On the anniversary of the first Sydney Mardi Gras, Jerry is sharing his true self with ABCQueer for the first time.

Coming out in post-war England

Growing up in England in the late 60s and early 70s, Jerry knew that being gay was taboo. Private homosexual activity between two consenting men over the age of 21 was decriminalised in 1967, but public acceptance was still a long way off.

“I knew I was same-sex attracted and that it should be hidden from an early age,” Jerry said.

“I didn’t need anyone to tell me my mother would disapprove of learning [I was attracted to men].”

Despite intense societal pressure to remain closeted, Jerry decided to come out in 1978, about three years after realising he was queer.

He says coming out “was an act in two parts”, and he started with his family members.

The second part occurred while studying at the Royal Botanic Gardens in the leafy London suburb of Kew.

As part of a public speaking competition, Jerry publicly outed himself.

“The brief was we could discuss sex, politics and religion but not botany for 10 minutes,” said Jerry.

In front of his teachers, peers, and botanists visiting from overseas, Jerry made an impassioned plea for equality.

“I came out and made the case for a change in the law to have an equal age of consent [which was 16 for heterosexuals]. I won my case; a majority of the audience raised their hands in support.”

Protesting in the name of pride

The same year Jerry came out, he took part in his first London Pride march.

“The whole experience of walking the street with hundreds of out gay men and women protesting, waving banners, being jeered at and insulted along the route was quite overwhelming,” Jerry said.

It was illegal at the time for Jerry to have sex with his boyfriend, John, as Jerry was under 21, so they were anxious about being photographed and outed.

“His mother, Brenda, knew and approved of us — she became a dear gardening friend — but she was always anxious about John being sent to prison. So, we were discreet.”

To this day, Jerry remembers the sheer size of the police presence along the route of the march.

“In side streets, you could see riot police mounted on horses,” he said. “At the end of the route, the pavements were lined with police shoulder to shoulder. There was a police helicopter overhead.

“Police blocked one exit, so the only way out was to leave the way we marched in.”

The police’s intimidatory tactics were not sufficient to deter the marchers from celebrating their act of defiance.

“There was a modest after-party at the Union of London Universities,” said Jerry. “It was uplifting. I didn’t stay late, but it did help me feel connected, less isolated, and more motivated.”

Drawn to a land Down Under

Upon graduating from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Jerry won a botanical scholarship to study the flora of Western Australia.

“It changed my life,” Jerry said.

“The Australian flora at Kew fascinated me and I learned the most charismatic wildflowers grow in the south-west of WA, so I spent most of a year collecting and documenting the flora,” he said.

Aged just 21, Jerry discovered new species and varieties unknown to science, including a flowering myrtle — the critically endangered Harlequin bell (Darwinia polychroma).

“[That discovery] was very special,” Jerry said.

“The greatest impact was realising that bushland I visited had been pretty much unspoiled by industry — something that no European can ever experience in their native lands.”

He sent back specimens of every find to the UK and the WA Herbaria.

After a decade back in the UK caring for his terminally ill father, Jerry successfully applied for a working holiday visa and helped establish the Australian Native Botanic Garden in Mount Annan in Sydney’s north-west. In 1992, he emigrated permanently.

Hiding in plain sight

During his time managing the living collections at the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, Jerry made his first foray into the media as a regular guest on ABC local radio, giving gardening advice to talkback callers.

In 2000, he joined Gardening Australia as a guest contributor and, before long, became a permanent part of the longest-running gardening show on national TV. But the jump to television was not straightforward for Jerry.

“When I joined Gardening Australia and it was ‘discovered’ I was gay, it required the intervention of Peter Cundall, our anchor, to secure my role,” Jerry said.

Jerry’s then-partner, Jeff Poole, who had travelled with him to Gardening Australia’s former head office in Hobart, remembers waiting in a rental car while Jerry met with Peter Cundall and the then-executive producer, Richard Reisz.

Growing impatient with waiting, Jeff went inside and introduced himself.

“In hindsight, as Jerry was trying to reassure Richard that he wasn’t going to start pole dancing on the show, it might have been better had I stayed in the car,” he said.

Jeff says Jerry first told him about Reisz’s concerns and Cundall’s intervention sometime around 2004.

“Jerry much later confirmed to me that it was Pete arguing to keep Jerry, while Richard Reisz was very upset about having an out gay man on the show.”

Richard’s recollection of that meeting differs. He says his first impression of Jerry was that he would make great on-air talent, but was hesitant, as Gardening Australia already had an English presenter.

In the end, Richard says Jerry’s on-screen talent won out.

“At no point did Jerry’s sexuality, nor any intervention from Peter Cundall, which I also have no recollection of, influence that decision.”

Jerry is adamant that his sexuality was not accepted readily.

“When I bleached my hair in 2000, Gardening Australia told me they would resume working with me when my hair returned to its normal colour,” Jerry said.

Jeff remembers the incident and believes it was just the next step in toning down Jerry’s presentation as an outwardly gay man.

“Never have I heard of a female presenter being forced to wear their natural hair colour,” Jeff said.

Similar incidents followed in the mid-2000s, including when Jerry wanted to wear a pink triangle on his lapel — something he had done since 1979 after learning about the significance of the LGBTQ+ symbol. Jerry says he was told to remove that, as well as his necklace and an earring in his left ear.

At a time when the LGBTQ+ community was less widely accepted, some within the ABC felt that displaying symbols like the pink triangle contravened internal policies on political impartiality.

“A pink triangle was regarded as inappropriate as wearing a political party badge would be,” Jerry said.

Both Jerry and Jeff, who was often present during the filming of segments at their home, emphasise that individual crew members were almost always accepting of their relationship.

As Jeff recalls, the erasure of Jerry’s queer identity was institutional, not individual. Jeff remembers several segments where Jerry interviewed LGBTQ+ gardeners, and that any queer-coded references featuring Jerry were omitted.

“This was presented as ‘professionalism’ and I dare say internalised as such,” Jeff said.

“It was usually framed as Jerry’s choices being ‘out there’ or ‘too modern for our audience’.

“[Jerry] was told the ABC was apolitical. [But] being gay is political!”

Eventually, Jeff says Jerry opted for the path of least resistance.

“Once certain ‘standards’ are asserted, the structure of the show meant that if you resisted, you were easily replaced,” Jeff said.

So, like many queer people, Jerry chose to stay in the closet on screen rather than risk his job security.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the ABC said that “Jerry is a longstanding presenter and valued member of the Gardening Australia team”.

“The program encourages every member of the team to bring their authentic selves to work and supports and celebrates people of all backgrounds.

“Gardening Australia is committed to fostering an inclusive workplace that is respectful and welcoming for all.”

Finding love through gardening

Jerry met his husband, Thuan, a fellow green thumb, responding to a gardening question on his Facebook page.

“I answer 10,000 questions a year and at the start of 2015, Thuan became one of my most frequent questioners,” Jerry said.

“I learned that he lived at the family market garden in Hue, Central Vietnam, that he is a third-generation market gardener, and that his grandparents had cared for the king’s orchard. That made him a gardener of interest.”

Jerry, who guides gardening tours when he’s not on camera, was planning on visiting Vietnam with a group of gardeners later that year. He forwarded the itinerary to Thuan and hoped they might meet in Hue.

It turned out Thuan was studying in Ho Chi Minh City and was keen to meet for coffee when Jerry arrived.

Jerry and Thuan hit it off immediately, and it was not long before plans were afoot for Thuan to join Jerry in suburban Brisbane. Fast-forward two years, and they were unofficially wed in the months leading up to the same-sex marriage postal survey.

“Thuan is a joy to be with,” Jerry said. “Loving, kind, patient and very easy to get along with. His experience and personal qualities are hard to beat.”

The ongoing need for queer visibility

Jerry, who formalised his union with Thuan after same-sex marriage was legalised in 2017, may have benefited from improving LGBTQ+ rights, but he knows that progress can be undone.

“If we don’t make our presence felt, improvements can be reversed,” Jerry said.

“The LGBTQ+ community still faces risks I have known all my life; bullying starts at school and it continues in the workplace,” he said.

Jerry has had to employ many different tactics throughout his life to avoid violence.

“You learn to take safer routes home to avoid dangerous situations, like night buses in London,” he said. “Never sit upstairs.”

“Despite being cautious, I have been raped.”

It was a time when gay men rarely reported sexual assaults due to a culture of intense homophobia and a fear of not being believed.

“It is many years since I have had to intervene to prevent a queer bashing at a railway station … [but I still] never look obviously queer on a train in the evening.”

In addition to his personal pain, Jerry recalls the devastating effect the HIV/AIDS epidemic had on the gay community.

“I lost more friends to AIDS in the 1980s than I care to remember,” he said.

“A whole address book of lost lives, friendships and potential.”

Jerry is also acutely aware that each queer person’s experience is unique.

“Change affects people differently, according to geography and timing,” Jerry said.

“I have always lived in cities — London, Edinburgh, Paris, Perth, Sydney and Brisbane — which makes being different easier. It is easier to hide your identity when there’s a threat.

“I think of the struggles for acceptance that the Sista Girls of the Tiwi Islands continue to grapple with.”

But despite the innumerable challenges, Jerry has always turned to the LGBTQ+ community as a source of strength and support.

Why pride still matters

For Jerry and Thuan, marching together at this year’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras was an opportunity to celebrate with other members of the queer community and allies.

“It [was] very exciting and uplifting,” Jerry said.

“[Mardi Gras] is a vital, visual, vocal way for the LGBTQ+ community and our allies to express ourselves, to make our presence and our expectations known, and to party.

He says it was also a chance to shine a light on the progress that still needs to be made.

“If life is safe and secure for the LGBTQ+ community, the better it is for everyone everywhere.”

While Jerry appreciates the increased visibility that the queer community now experiences, you might expect him to lament that he could not take advantage of it earlier in his career.

Instead, Jerry is grateful for the fact that he can now speak so candidly.

“You are the first in 31 years of work with the ABC to show an interest in my personal life [aka my] gay career,” Jerry said.

“Thank you for your interest.”